still have a bad miss

[ludacris1401]

i cant figureout y it is missing. i have a bad oil leak coming from the valve cover and under that whichis the head gasket right? i took the 3 plugs out and they were black and kind of oily. i put those in in september or october. so i changed the 3 that had oil on them and it didnt help the problem. i checked my egr valve and i think that it is fine. the screw that goes in and outmoves fine. iDK wat else to check or change. could the oil leak be a big problem? autozone and advanced auto arent helpin out at all neither is car quest

[maxwedge]

Those are not repair shops, this miss could have many causes, try a " real" tech for a proper diagnosis. In the future post the year and mileage.

[Loekee75]

Oil saturated plugs sounds like leaking valve guide seals to me.

[ludacris1401]

how do i check if there leaking? take cover off and do a compression test?

[LeSabre97mint]

Originally Posted by ludacris1401

how do i check if there leaking? take cover off and do a compression test?

ludacris

A compression test will not tell you if your valve seals are letting oil past them into the combustion chamber. Also, to do a compression test, the sparkplugs are removed and a gauage put in the sparkplug's hole one cylinder at a time in the sparkplugs place. There are two main ways oil gets into the conbustion chamber. 1. Through the valve seals. 2. Past the piston rings. If the oil is leaking past the valve seals you'll see blue oil smoke from the tail pipe during deceleration. If the rings are allowing oil to pass you'll see blue oil smoke during acceleration.

Are you using more than 1qt of oil per 3000 miles?

Regards

Dan

[ludacris1401]

yea i got though a lot more than that. and the smoke i never noticed it being any sorts of blue. but the oil leak is a lot and it burns on the engine and smokes under the hood and comes in the car when i have heat on or defrosters

[maxwedge]

Again, post the year of the car as requested!

[ludacris1401]

94 lesabre custom 3.8 144 k

[ChemMan]

This definately sounds like a case of bad valve guide seals. My Ford used to use multiple quarts per 3000 miles, and I never saw smoke from the tailpipe either. I changed the valve seals, and the car STOPPED using oil all together! If the leaks past the seals are bad enough, it will foul the plugs and cause rough idles, misses, etc. While you are at it, you can replace the valve cover gaskets and solve the other oil leaks too.

[ludacris1401]

how do i change those whatdoes it involve? and roughley how much are they

[ChemMan]

First off, buy yourself a chilton or haynes manual for your car. It will tell you how to do a variety of things and provide you with a lot of information. Basically you need to remove the valve covers (get new gaskets). Next remove the rocker arms, and then you need to remove the valve springs. Once the valve springs are off you can replace the valve seals and put everything back together. The rocker arms will require NEW bolts to reinstall, don't reuse the old ones, they are not designed for reuse. You'll need a torque wrench to torque the rocker arm bolts to the required torque. To remove the valve springs you'll need a valve spring compressor, the kind you can use with the heads still on the engine. The valve will need to be held in place once the springs are removed so that they do not fall into the engine. I've seen two ways to do this, either use a bent screw driver inserted through the spark plug hole to hold the valve up, or a special fitting that screws into the spark plug hole that allows you to use compressed air to hold the valves in place(I've never used that option). Make sure you get new valve spring retainers and keepers, and you may want to replace the springs depending on how many miles the engine has on it. Hopefully others will chime in on this and fill in the details for you. It is not a hard job, it just requires time, patience, and lots of forethought. You DO NOT want to drop a valve into the engine, as you will need to remove the head to retrieve it. Ask questions, and get yourself one of those books. Leave yourself plenty of time to do it. Feel free to ask questions here and you might want to try http://www.bonnevilleclub.com/forum/ , lots of knowledgeable people there.

Good Luck